The Hill City plate. Relief from Copernicus GLO-30; rivers and lakes from USGS NHD; watersheds from the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset; roads and city limits from Census TIGER 2024.
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−20° on Nov. 16, 1933, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1887. Next is −12° in 1894.
Hill City’s center stands about 1,340 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,260 ft to 1,470 ft, a difference of 210 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Big Thunder Peak, about 1,820 ft, 10 miles north-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Slate and graywacke (slate, graywacke), from the Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2 billion years old.
The section below crosses 2 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 36×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Slate, graywacke. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2 billion years old. About 20 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, lignite, sandstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 94 to 100 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale.
Heights from Copernicus GLO-90 (a surface model: it includes buildings and tree canopy); summits from USGS GNIS; rivers from USGS NHDPlus HR; rock from the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation.
A raindrop that lands in Hill City reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Hill, the Willow, Pokegama Creek and the Mississippi: about 2,120 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Pepin.
1,750 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Hill City; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Hill City has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 78° in July; winter nights fall to about −3° in January. About 28 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Hill City normally reaches 37° and falls to 21°. The record high is 64°, in 1953; the record low −9°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.71 in, fell in 1909.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1887 at Pokegama Dam, 18 miles north. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
